ORCID Profile
0000-0003-0847-0763
Current Organisation
University of Tasmania
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Publisher: Intellect
Date: 06-2019
Abstract: In the context of rapidly changing newsrooms and a constriction in entry-level positions for graduates, the Europe and Australia in the World (WORLDREP) programme seeks to prepare students by pairing freelance journalism with overseas training and exchange. However, the entrepreneurial focus of the course must be weighed against the challenges and idiosyncratic hiring criteria that graduates face on their return home. This article discusses interviews with former Tasmanian participants to compare what the students felt they acquired during the course with perceived barriers and challenges post-graduation. We find that the programme’s freelance focus cultivates a range of applied skills, an extensive publication portfolio and professional confidence. However, interviewees also reported that a lack of local newsroom contacts – traditionally provided through newsroom internships – constitutes a hurdle on their return home. This prompts a discussion about how to complement exchange programmes with local networking and professional development initiatives that can ground what students have learnt overseas in local journalism practice.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 10-2015
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 18-09-2017
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 30-08-2015
Abstract: In 2009 in Hobart, Australia, a 12-year-old ward of the state was advertised in a metropolitan newspaper as an 18-year-old prostitute. The decision to prosecute only one of the 100-plus men alleged to have paid her for sex made national headlines and gave rise to allegations of a conspiracy involving the highest levels of government and the judiciary. It also resulted in reform of the state’s laws relating to the ‘mistake as to age’ defence. This paper examines news coverage of the institutional responses to this criminal matter in order to theoretically understand the relationship between contemporary journalistic representations of crime and politicised controversy about social problems such as child sexual exploitation. Drawing on an analysis of problem framing in news coverage and interviews with journalists and their sources, it investigates how the news value of the story was identified and seeks to identify the point at which news coverage tipped beyond social usefulness towards public outrage and conspiracy.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 06-07-2017
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 26-04-2021
Publisher: MDPI AG
Date: 11-05-2021
DOI: 10.3390/LAWS10020035
Abstract: Conflicts over environmental sustainability are increasingly being fought in court, such as the use of Public Environmental Litigation (PEL) to challenge developments impacting the environment in Australia and elsewhere. News media coverage of PEL introduces legal actors to the dynamics of mediatized environmental conflict, which provides a platform for conflict actors to gain mediated visibility for their cause to influence public debate. When legal opportunities, such as PEL, are used as a c aign tactic, the dynamics of contest are exposed and, while courts have some power over legal actors, parties seek news media to favorably translate legal outcomes to the public. This article explores the nexus of PEL, news media, and communication strategies to find greater understanding of who gains from the mediated visibility that occurs when transnational environmental c aigns take their claims to court. Using content analysis and discourse analysis of news texts and semi-structured interviews relating to eight PEL cases instigated to stop the Adani Carmichael coal megamine in Australia, we seek better understanding of the mechanisms at play when PEL c aigns appear in news media, and find that the dominance of outside court sources in news coverage not only privilege the political aspects of PEL over the legal, but highlights how strategic litigation, such as PEL, can be used to influence public opinion and, therefore, a political response, regarding environmental conflict.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 16-04-2018
Abstract: Since the 1970s, the Reef has been a site where Australian environmental policy has flourished, mirroring global environmental policy seeking to ‘balance’ human activity through ‘ecologically sustainable development’. The article examines the parallel and intersecting processes of modern environmental policy and news media practice in the context of the Reef to unveil how Australia's news media are communicating critical moments in the protection of the Reef. Through two key conservation moments – the 1981 World Heritage Listing and the 2012 threat to place the Reef on the List of World Heritage in Danger – the article examines the role of news media in different geographic contexts, highlighting the complex politics of protection from early conservation c aigns to the contemporary era of protecting the Reef in the context of global environmental crisis. We identify how ecologically sustainable development discourses can be used to communicate positions that challenge and discredit policy initiatives aimed at protecting natural environments.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 19-01-2021
Abstract: When Australian physicist, Peter Ridd, lost his tenured position with James Cook University, he was called a ‘whistleblower’, ‘contrarian academic’ and ‘hero of climate science denial’. In this article, we examine the events surrounding his dismissal to better understand the role of science communication in organised climate change scepticism. We discuss the sophistry of his complaint to locate where and through what processes science communication becomes political communication. We argue that the prominence of scientists and scientific knowledge in debates about climate change locates science, as a social sphere or fifth pillar in Hutchins and Lester’s theory of mediatised environmental conflict. In doing so, we provide a model to better understand how science communication can be deployed during politicised debates.
No related grants have been discovered for Claire Konkes.